We don't care about your bracket

CommentsDid you think Wichita State was going to be The Little Train That Could? Oh, you picked Mercer over Duke? That's great, but we couldn't care less. (USA TODAY Sports)

You picked Dayton. You're a genius. You picked Mercer to beat Duke. You're a double genius. You picked Stephen F. Austin to win that game against Virginia Commonwealth. Had to sweat a little bit until the kid, Desmond Haymon, hit the four-point play, but somehow you knew what was going to happen. You called it. You're Albert Einstein. You're Albert Schweitzer. You're Marv Albert.

I don't care about your NCAA tournament bracket.

You didn't pick Dayton. You didn't pick Mercer. You didn't pick Stephen F. Austin. You thought Syracuse was going to go all the way if it wasn't stopped by Ohio State. Kansas looked very good. Duke. Villanova. You thought Wichita State was going to be The Little Train That Could, something like that, travel unbeaten all the way. You were going to be the conductor. What happened? What?

You had a system. You picked according to mascots. Your basic idea was that bigger animal beats smaller animal, animate beats inanimate, humans should triumph above all others. You weren't sure what to do with a Shocker, a Tar Heel, a Cyclone. A Jasper. What's a Jasper? The Stanford tree was a problem because there was a human inside it. Then, Harvard was a color, Crimson. Where does a color fit in? You had misgivings. The misgivings became disaster.

I don't care about your NCAA tournament bracket.

You went the Nate Silver route. Analytics. You somehow found inseam measurements from tailors, sneaker sizes from shoe representatives, the distribution of hops from breweries. (That last one is a joke.) You calculated the distance between every hand for every dribble, knew how many dribbles were optimal for a perfect drive to the glass. You studied the barometric pressure for every arena, doors closed, doors open, time of day, to see which team had the best jump shot possibilities. You collected numbers, numbers, numbers, churned them through a half-dozen computers and still you lost games. Why isn't Weber State still dancing? Coastal Carolina? Delaware? Should you check those numbers again?

I don't care about your NCAA tournament bracket.

You have a history with this stuff. You have a little pool in the family. Your wife has won nine of the past 10 years. Your seven-year-old daughter won the other time. Your dog picked better than you did one year. That was embarrassing. You took care of the problem. You banned four-legged animals from the pool. The dog, the cat and the new family of hamsters are not happy.

I don't care about your NCAA tournament bracket.

You went this year with one-and-done youth. That gave you Kentucky with the Harrison brothers, James Young, Julius Randle and Dakari Johnson. Very nice. Move along to the next round. You also put a lot of weight on the presence of Jabari Parker at Duke, Andrew Wiggins and Wayne Selden Jr. at Kansas. No luck there. Memo to Self: Maybe a few upperclassmen next year? Maybe memo to Bill Self.

I don't care about your NCAA tournament bracket.

You picked from memories. You forgot that Christian Laettner no longer plays for Duke, Michael Jordan no longer plays for North Carolina, Danny Manning no longer plays for Kansas. You would have picked Houston because of Hakeem Olajuwon, Marquette because of Dwayne Wade, Indiana State because of Larry Bird, except none of these schools were in the tournament field this year. You are still alive with UCLA (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Walton, John Wooden) and Michigan State (Magic Johnson.) Lucky you.

I don't care about your NCAA tournament bracket.

You picked your alma matter to win it all? You picked a team because it came from your state? You picked teams because of their uniform colors? You picked the underdog in every game? You picked the chalk? You were inspired by music on the radio? You needed absolute quiet? You went to the library? You made your picks on your iPhone, your iPad, your device of choice? You made your picks while you were on the clock, getting paid? You closed your eyes and stuck a pin into the big board and it landed on North Dakota State? These are the best picks you ever made? The worst?

I don't care about your NCAA tournament bracket.

You didn't win the Billion Dollars. You didn't win the Billion Dollars. You didn't win the Billion Dollars. You didn't win the Billion Dollars. You didn't win the Billion Dollars. You didn't win the Billion Dollars. Etc. You were eliminated by the ______ game of the tournament. You could have used that billion dollars. You had it spent in your mind, exactly the way you spent the money from Megabucks and Powerball and other lotteries you have never won. You didn't win this one, either. You didn't win the Billion Dollars. You didn't.

I don't care about your NCAA tournament bracket.

My own bracket, I must say, was doing pretty well until yesterday. I was in the 92nd percentile, tied with President Obama when the games started. Then Stanford upset Kansas and Kentucky shocked those Shockers and it went downhill from there. I am still alive with my Final Four of UConn, Florida, Louisville and Creighton. (Oh, wait a minute, what was that Creighton score?) My champion is UConn because I went to school there and because Shabazz Napier is a young basketball god and because I have a lucky sweatshirt and a spot in the house where I sit to watch the games and because the UConn women are also going to win it all and because, because, because…